Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method for providing agent assistance and particularly to a system and method for providing agent assistance to improve handling of incoming calls.
Description of Related Art
Contact centers are employed by many enterprises to service inbound and outbound contacts from customers. A typical contact center includes a switch and/or server to receive and route incoming packet-switched and/or circuit-switched contacts and one or more resources, such as human agents and automated resources (e.g., Interactive Voice Response units (IVR)), to service the incoming contacts. Contact centers distribute contacts, whether inbound or outbound, for servicing to any suitable resource according to predefined criteria. In many existing systems, the criteria for servicing the contact from the moment the contact center becomes aware of the contact until the contact is connected to an agent are client or operator-specifiable (i.e., programmable by the operator of the contact center), via a capability called vectoring. Normally in present-day Automatic Call Distributions (ACDs) when the ACD system detects an agent has become available to handle a contact, the ACD system identifies all predefined contact-handling queues for the agent (usually in some order of priority) and delivers to the agent with the highest-priority, oldest contact that matches the agent's highest-priority queue. Generally, the only condition that results in a contact not being delivered to an available agent is that there are no contacts waiting to be handled.
The primary objective of contact center management is to ultimately maximize contact center performance and profitability. An ongoing challenge in contact center administration is monitoring and optimizing contact center efficiency. The contact center efficiency is generally measured in two ways—service level and match rate.
Service level is one measurement of the contact center efficiency. Service level is typically determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted within the specified period by the number accepted plus the number that were not accepted, but completed in some other way (e.g., abandoned, given busy, canceled, flowed out). Of course, service level definitions may vary from one enterprise to another.
Match rate is another indicator used in measuring contact center efficiency. Match rate is usually determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted by a primary skill level agent within a period of time by the number of contacts accepted by any agent for a queue over the same period. An agent with a primary skill level is one that typically can handle contacts of a certain nature most effectively and/or efficiently. There are other contact center agents that may not be as proficient as the primary skill level agent, and those agents are identified either as secondary skill level agents or backup skill level agents. As can be appreciated, contacts received by a primary skill level agent are typically handled more quickly and accurately or effectively (e.g., higher revenue attained) than a contact received by a secondary or even backup skill level agent. Thus, it is an objective of most contact centers to optimize match rate along with the service level.
In addition to service level and match rate performance measures, contact centers use other Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”), such as revenue, estimated, actual, or predicted wait time, average speed of answer, throughput, agent utilization, agent performance, agent responsiveness and the like, to calculate performance relative to their Service Level Agreements (“SLAs”). Operational efficiency is achieved when KPIs are managed near, but not above, SLA levels.
Throughput is a measure of the number of calls/contact requests or work requests that can be processed in a given amount of time. Agent utilization is a measure of how efficiently agents' time is being used. Customer service level is a measure of the time customers spend waiting for their work to be handled. Company contact centers wish to provide service to as many customer requests as possible in a given amount of time, using the least number of agents to do so, and minimizing the wait time for their customers that can increase the service level agreement of the contact center.
Generally, to achieve these desired business goals, a predefined script is provided to the agents of the contact center to handle the calls and to provide better services to the customers. For example, a predefined script may have instructions to say “hello” within first 30 seconds of the call and to say “goodbye” before completion of the call. Further, when calls having different call patterns (e.g., calls related to “car loan”, “home loan” etc.) are routed to agents, then the agents concentrate on the call and follow all the instructions of the predefined scripts while providing services to the customers. For example, an agent, who is proficient in providing services about a home loan policy, receives a call from a customer to inquire about a healthcare policy, and then the agent may follow a predefined script associated with the healthcare policy with full attention and concentration to provide service to the customer.
On the other hand, when calls having similar patterns (e.g., all calls related to “car loan policy”) are routed to an agent who may have handled similar calls in the past, then the agent, generally, does not refer the predefined scripts and quickly provides services to the customers as the agent is already familiar with the call pattern. However, with the repetitive work and similar call patterns, the agents may not concentrate on the call and may take quick and sub-optimal decisions that may further lead to errors. Further, the familiarity with the routine call pattern of the calls lowers the agent's attention span and concentration level which may further reduce the desired values of the business goals of the contact center.
There is thus a need for a system and method for providing agent assistance to improve handling of the calls and further forces the agent to re-analyze the customer's query before providing the customer services.